Baby Berry Pies

Kevin read my last post about the blueberry tart I made for Kathy's birthday, and was upset that there wasn't any left over for him. So I came up with the idea to make individual pies in my new ramekins I got for Christmas- I've actually wanted to try something like this since I got them. I had a couple cups of frozen blackberries in the freezer, so that was the berry of choice! I used the filling recipe from the blueberry tort (but I only used 2 cups of berries + 3/4 cups sugar in a pot on medium heat, then added the mixture of 2 TBSP of corn starch + 2 TBSP of water, and simmered for a few minutes until it began to thicken), and a the easiest crust recipe on the planet that was shared with me from my mommy-in-law: a heaping cup of flour (I used cake flour this time), 1/4 cup of vegetable oil, and 1/4 cup of cold water + shake of cinnamon. Now here's the easy part- you put all the crust ingredients in a Tupperware, snap on the lid, and give it like 10 or 15 shakes until you can feel it rolling around in there. Sometimes you have to add a bit more flour, sometimes a bit more water. Then, take it out, and roll it out on a flat surface like normal! Easy, see? Now came the more time consuming part- lining the (buttered) ramekins with dough. I ended up cutting lots of little strips of dough to fill in all the gaps, and pressing the pieces together.

It worked okay, although I should have used more dough so it folded over the edges and pinch the top crust to the bottom instead of just pressing from the top (you can see in the picture below that the filling oozed out because I couldn't quite seal the crust using this method). Next I scooped in some of the filling, rolled out more dough and found that a martini glass was the perfect size press to make a round top crust. Here they are, in three stages:

And a little decoration~

And voíla! Aren't they cute? :)

I somehow managed to let them sit for a good half hour before diving in so I didn't burn the insides of my mouth, but it was worth the wait! The pies were nice and warm, and gooey on the inside, but not too drippy either.

Ah, sweet blackberry heaven! As I was eating mine, I thought it might have been a little heavy on the crust, especially if it wasn't still warm and soft. I bet these would still turn out pretty good with just a top layer of crust. Or even to make it less time consuming, I could try some pre-packed filo dough. Plus the extra light buttery crust might better compliment the sweet filling, and not absorb quite so much of the liquid. I'll definitely make these again!